August 2011
64 posts
“I will drink Life to the lees”
—Alfred Lord Tennyson in Ulysses
“Grace and Peace to you, my brothers and sisters. May they invade you.”
—
“Nothing has any value in Peru. If we break it, we buy another one when we have the money. You cannot forget about people, your family, the people you love. Life is too short to forget about people.”
—My Grandmother on a rooftop in her hometown of Callao, Peru
“I walked past a hundred blue mountains, climbed their backs, and descended into fields of golden-plenty. At some moment, I fell quiet on my back, suddenly present with a silence I have never known. I screamed // Where have You been? I climbed these very mountains but to see Your face. I have scoured the earth, here to find You; yet You remain absent in the Heavens, no doubt reclining at Your table as I scream echoes into valleys, each reporting the very lack of You // Then as I lay, gasping for air, He whispered // Child, be still, in all this you have discovered me. It is written / Seek and you shall find / In your very wanderings you have seen me, for you have climbed my face and screamed your breath within my ribs. Your steps have not once exited my Kingdom, nor ever shall it be so. Go now in Peace //”
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Martyr's Prayer
I won’t stop until I have the full of you in my arms. I won’t stop until I’m weeping at your feet screaming “How did you love me?” I won’t stop until heaven itself swallows me whole. I won’t stop until every square foot of this earth vibrates with the echoes of your Holy Name. You are mine. You are mine and I am yours, and there is no battle You may lead me to that I will not fight. Let the demons come, for there is a power in my chest which has conquered death, and so too shall I conquer this damn flesh. I am the son of a King, whose ringed finger we are not worthy to lay our lips upon; yet, his murdered Son’s blood hath paid the price so that I may do just so. Die in Hell, you cheap temptations! For, I heed your touch no longer. To the depths of fire I send thee, oh childish ways of mine, for in your place a man stands reborn! This is the battle my heart has been seeking from its earliest dawn. This is the passion my chest hath needed. Unto eternity, my Lord, my being shall scream thy name, and it knows, in faith, you scream mine too.
“I sat upon a mountain, surrounded in every direction by the same. As I sat, I wondered what had caused God’s body to fall in such a jagged position. I wondered about the sound he made when he fell and in turn dented the earth, forming mountains. I imagined for a moment that the pinnacle upon which I was standing had jutted upwards between my fallen God’s jaw and collar. Suddenly, a voice in the wind: They are but cracks within the lines of my palms.”
—
“For many years I understood Grace as the conquering of my own death; ‘twas I who laid low in the flames and ‘twas Grace who pulled me from them. Though in this night, I see the truth: I chose the flames with the sickest of passions. I ran to them with the greatest of hastes as a lunatic raving through the nighted streets. As the Spirit of the Lord pleaded with me to end my dooming flight, I spat in his face and cursed him horribly. Then I threw my emaciated body headlong into the embers, reveling in their sting but for a moment. Soon enough, my flesh burned away and my heathen bones the same. Then, in the sweetest of movements, the Lord collected my dust and breathed life in again as He had done so many times before, and with eyes of lighting and vocal chords of thunder He whispered: Child of mine, burn no more. ‘Tis Gace, my friends.”
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“There are very few things I am completely certain of in this life. In fact, there are four distinct statements of being which I feel they can be separated into: I am, God is, all is Grace, and a private matter I care not to divulge publicly. Whatever balance of faith that has led me to this ground where I can see these things clearly you may attack as you wish, but I will stand by them firmly. Beyond that: the middle two, by nature, are exceedingly sufficient to care for the other two statements. You see, for quite some time I have committed the logical error of allowing the first and last phrases to sit atop the pinnacle of my existence. In doing so, I have utterly discounted any system of recognition of the core of my beliefs. For whatever reason, man is so pressed to ask the question of “Why?” within the context of himself that he has banished God and His abundant Grace into the darkness of forgetfulness. Perhaps our transgressions stem not from an inadequate view of the Creator (though I do believe my view of an infinite being will consistently be inadequate for eternity come), but rather from an improper view of ourselves. Our greatest folly is to place the crux of being upon our own chests. This is the story of the Garden explained in a sentence: Man knew not, and thought he should; therefore, he did.”
—Christian Tenbrook
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“We were golden: laid within dark houses alone. Though the night was not one of us, it was unmistakably kissed by our glow.”
—Christian Tenbrook
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Sonnet 116 - William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover remove;
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is not shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
